“Strike the Blow for Freedom” Civil War 6th Regiment U.S. Colored Troop

The Civil War was the culmination of years of tremendous political agitation regarding the abolition of slavery and the issue of states’ rights to secede from the United States. Although the war’s declared aim was to preserve the Union, free Blacks were eager to join the Union Army to fight against slavery and prove that they were worthy of equal rights as citizens.

As the Union forces moved south, enslaved people left the plantations to join up. They were inspired by the formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass, who proclaimed, “Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

The Emancipation Proclamation authorizing the recruitment of Black troops took effect in January 1863. In a pattern that would not end until after World War II, African Americans were assigned to all-Black regiments headed by white commissioned officers, and given the most arduous tasks, such as digging an infamous canal near Richmond while under enemy fire.

The 6th Regiment U.S. Colored Troop was organized near Philadelphia that summer. The regiment was honored to have the Rev. Jeremiah Asher, one of only 14 Black ministers in the Union Army, assigned as chaplain.

Fifty-two of the 1,272 members of the 6th Regiment were born in New Jersey. The regiment took part in crucial engagements in Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, but its greatest battle was at New Market Heights, where three members earned Congressional Medals of Honor, and casualties were severe. By the end of the war, 224 had died — 87 in battle and the rest from disease.

The modern re-enactment troop, according to Algernon Ward, who serves as a sergeant, was joined by New Jersey residents eager to uncover and understand the vital role African Americans played in the Civil War. One of them, Fred Minus, is the great-great-grandson of Civil War soldier John Henry Minus.

In 2003, the 6th Regiment re-enactors were chosen to participate in a PBS television series on American slavery, aired in February 2005. Mr. Ward played the role of Robert Smalls, a Black Civil War hero whose exploits included the theft of a Confederate ship.

“The story of Black soldiers in the Civil War has not been explored enough,” Mr. Ward said. “Our mission, through our members and our cadets, is to help people understand this history and give these heroes the recognition they deserve.”

Juneteenth -- A Celebration of the End of Slavery

When they re-enacted a Civil War Muster on the meadows of Grasmere Park in 2006, the 6th Regiment was joined by members of the Trenton Juneteenth Committee, who portrayed women camp followers, nurses and scouts.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. It commemorates June 19th, 1865, when Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation had become official, but the proclamation had had little impact on Texans because there were few Union troops to enforce it.

However, with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome resistance to the end of slavery.

The Hilton Section: Many Names, One Identity

“Hilton has always been a prideful, hard-working section of Maplewood which produced a great deal and to this day it has maintained its identity.”

These are the words of Louis deFillipis, a long-time Maplewood attorney whose wife was descended from a dairy farmer whose farm was on Boyden Avenue, near the present Maplewood Pool.

This intriguing part of town was one of the first areas to become a thriving community on a well-traveled thoroughfare we now know as Springfield Avenue.

The Hilton section has been the subject of a number of historical accounts in Maplewood Past and Present, edited by Helen Bates, Beatrice Herman’s book The Trail to the Upland Plantations, and numerous newspaper articles Mrs. Herman and others wrote over the years.

The area was originally part of Newark Township, formed in 1693. According to Maplewood Past and Present, from the time of the first settlements on the banks of the Passaic River, Newark “was the parent of small settlements scattered westward toward the Mountain.”

It became known as North Farms, an industrious area where people grew their own food and made all their clothing, shoes and hats by hand. In 1806, the Newark-Springfield Turnpike, a toll-road, was extended through the area, bringing travelers and business. By 1830 some of the hat-makers had expanded into small factories. As it developed as a stopover point about equidistant between Morristown and Newark, the community took the name of Middleville. Taverns, hotels and stores flourished along the Turnpike, including Headley’s General Store at the intersection of Springfield and Burnett Avenues.

In 1880, when the community sought its own post office, it was discovered that a Middleville already existed, so the name Hilton was chosen. At that point Hilton, along with Maplewood, was part of the Township of South Orange.

An Entertainment Destination

The area became known for its entertainment opportunities such as shooting matches in the thick woods near the Tuscan Club, on the edge of what is now Maplecrest Park; buggy races between the Old Hilton Hotel and Millburn; and bicycle races, which reportedly attracted as many as 10,000 spectators along the route.

Becker’s Grove was the site of many picnics and German-style songfests. In 1915, a concert hall built for the Songfest was turned into an opera house. Eventually the Grove became the site of Olympic Park, a popular amusement park that flourished until 1965. Its carousel, the largest ever made in America, is now in Disney World.

Flourishing Farms

The Hilton area became known for the strawberries developed by Seth Boyden, a renowned inventor who retired to the area in 1855.

Charles Dzuba, an engineer who worked at Public Service Electric & Gas, came across Seth Boyden’s process patents for manufacturing malleable cast iron. He became fascinated with the inventor, and wondered if there was a connection between Seth Boyden and the Boyden Avenue address of his laboratory.

Over time, he has amassed a wealth of knowledge on Boyden, and he spoke at a Durand-Hedden Open House in November 2004, showing slides and some of the items that he collected.

Seth Boyden’s experiments produced enormous, delicious strawberries and local farmers started growing them and selling them to top hotels and restaurants in New York.

Boyden’s close friend was Elias Wade Durand, son of Cyrus and nephew of Asher and Henry. Elias became an expert horticulturalist in his own right, and in 1876 he won a bronze medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

By 1915 strawberry cultivation had dwindled and farmers started growing pansies and cutting flowers. The largest landowner in the area, Timothy Burnet, died in 1903 and soon after, his 100 acres were divided into residential lots, becoming the suburban development it is today.

Compiling an accurate history of an area is a complex undertaking. Trustees Patty Chrisman, Maria Heningburg and Susan Newberry read historical accounts and writings, reviewed census records, deeds and old photographs, and interviewed long-time residents to explore, verify and record as much information as possible.

The Durand-Hedden House hopes that residents with information and artifacts (letters, mementos, photos, family stories, etc.) will be willing to share what they have to enrich the history.

If Walls Could Talk: Maplewood Town Hall Murals

The story of Maplewood is all around us, in the array of houses that span three centuries, and in the ancient trees that predate our roads. But nowhere is that story more eloquently told than in the paintings that grace the main chamber of Maplewood’s Town Hall. Towering above the benches are nine magnificent murals illustrating the breadth of Maplewood history, from the Native Americans who lived in this valley in 1600 to a 1958 Fourth of July celebration.

Town Hall (or as it is prosaically named, the Municipal Building) was built in 1930-31, and the nine-foot-tall niches in the main chamber were designed to frame murals. The Great Depression forced the town to postpone their creation for almost thirty years.

In 1957, according to a contemporary newspaper report, Mayor Thomas Sweeney, announcing the project, said the murals “would make this great room one in which all citizens could take pride and from which pleasure and stimulation would flow.”

Typical of Maplewood, the project was not without its dissenters. One critic said that the murals would interrupt “the colonial simplicity of the room.” Another protested that the money should be spent on education. “Just what can the children and adults of Maplewood learn from murals that would be of any value?” she wrote.

Most people could see the value of it, however, and the citizens of Maplewood raised the money for the murals by private subscription. In the end, $10,000 was raised, and artist Stephen Juharos of Newark, a noted muralist, was awarded the commission. He was selected by a committee headed by Joseph V. Noble, a long-time Maplewood resident and member of the Durand-Hedden Board of Trustees. At the time, Mr. Noble was Vice Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

John Crowell Bausmith, a life-long Maplewood resident who was named Township Historian in December 2003, made it a priority to raise money to restore the murals to their original brilliance. Painted on Belgian linen canvas stretched on panels, the murals had become dirty, discolored and damaged by water.

The Murals Book Reprinted

On October 24, 2004 Durand-Hedden sponsored a celebration of the murals at Town Hall. Mr. Bausmith introduced a newly reprinted edition of “The Historical Murals of Maplewood,” a magnificent rendition of the original 1961 monograph by Joseph Noble with full-page color reproductions of the murals and essays about each. The books are $25 and may be purchased at the Durand-Hedden Country Store, at the Maplewood Library and at Millstone Lawn and Garden Store at Pierson’s Mill. Proceeds from book sales will be used to help fund the restoration.

The Durand-Hedden Association donated $2,500. Other fund-raising efforts over the next year included a raffle for a mixed-media painting by noted artist Vincent Nardone, and the sale of coffee mugs in several stores on Springfield Avenue and in Maplewood Village. The restoration work was estimated to cost at least $50,000 to $100,000 and was completed in 2007.

A Pictorial Chronology of Maplewood History

The selection of subject matter for the murals was the subject of much discussion in town in 1958 as artist Stephen Juharos researched and painted oil sketches for the final works.

In 1958, Mr. Juharos attended the Maplewood Fourth of July celebration “to catch the flavor and feel of the occasion in his sketch book,” the News-Record wrote. By this time, only a few months after his selection, the artist had already done a full-color sketch of the mural of 1779, depicting General George Washington visiting the Timothy Ball House on Ridgewood Road. This and the other oil sketches Mr. Juharos did are hung in the Township Committee meeting room just off the main chamber. A comparison with the final works shows some interesting changes in composition and detail.

The painting of the Timothy Ball house shows it in 1779. The portico and columns on the house as it appears today were added in about 1920, when the house was renovated by the developers of Washington Park.

One mural depicts Native American Indian Chief Tuscan c. 1600 returning from a successful deer hunt in an area near the present intersection of Tuscan Road and Valley Street.

The panel of artist Asher Brown Durand, a founder of the Hudson River School of painting, depicts him at work on a landscape in about 1840. Durand, whose brother Henry bought the Durand-Hedden House in 1812, was born in 1796 in what was then Jefferson Village. Durand’s paintings are in the collections of most major American museums.

Pierson’s Mill, built in 1831 and the family’s Greek Revival house built in 1843 are shown as they appeared in 1875. The business was owned and operated by six generations of the Pierson family until 2000.

Inventor Seth Boyden is the subject of another panel, c. 1860. He is shown looking at a bowl of strawberries, which he was famous for cultivating in Middleville (now the Hilton area). A steam engine, which he built, is shown pulling into the 1860 train station south of Baker Street.

The next mural is of James Ricalton, Maplewood’s first permanent schoolmaster, who is depicted c. 1883 conducting a class outside of the school, located where the main post office is today. The building served as the community’s school from 1870 to 1903.

Between 1920 and 1930, the town experienced a period of expansion, as shown in the next mural. In this decade, when most of the houses in town were built, the population increased from 5,000 to 21,000.

At the end of the room, above the Township Committee’s rostrum, is the largest mural, 10 feet square. It is a 1959 view of Maplewood and its surroundings as seen from the top of South Mountain Reservation above Wyoming Avenue. Maplewood includes 480 acres of the Reservation. New York City is seen in the distance.